January 6, 2024
You may think you are over it, but you might be surprised to find out that you really are not. She was a comfort to him in a bad time, but became a malignant tumor sapping his life from him faster than the cancer in his bones. I learned today She died 18 months ago, and I feel compelled to tell this story.
He tried to save my mother from the darkness, but Mom's stubbornness and inner sickness won out in the end. While he held her aloft and kept her afloat he showed me what a strong father figure could be. Neither Mom or I truly understood what love was until he came into our lives. We lived in a broken down trailer house bought from a family member even though they had a combined income that could have easily supported a big suburban house. Why? Because Mom had addictions, bad habits, and me. Before Mom, he had a house in the ‘burbs, two kids and a loveless marriage. When they bumped into each other at work the sparks flew. Mom was horny, and lonely. He found in her what he needed. She was broken, wanted to love someone, and she was so different from what he had before. It was a match made in a dark heaven, they thought.
I was six, and we became a family. From then until I moved out at 18, I didn’t realize it then, but we lived a relatively normal family life with our own trials and tribulations. I went to boarding school for four years and learned more about who I was, and just how twisted life at home really was under the cover of normalcy.
Mom loved men, booze, and Vicodin. Making what appeared to be a smart decision not long after I moved out of the house, she started going to AA. Then fell in bed with her sponsor and left home. Separation was real; it was happening, and it was weird for all three of us. I moved out of state to be with my love and they, after Mom’s sponsor had a series of heart attacks, somehow resolved their differences and got back together.
Mom’s choices in life caught up with her and she succumbed to her destroyed and alcoholically dehydrated body. During her final few months, he found solace in the arms of another. The She that eventually drained him of his goodness. To be fair, if the tables were turned, Mom would have done the same. Watching someone give into addiction, mental illness, and wither away in front of you is heart wrenching, you need support.
Four months after Mom died, he married his comfort giver. During their 12 years together, she systematically removed all traces of his life with Mom. To the extent that in order to give me my mother’s Bible we had to talk in the basement while She was distracted by another elsewhere in the house. Phone calls to him were accompanied in the background with questions and interrogations of what was being discussed. Holiday cards and gifts were questioned, and when mention of our memories together or our lives before her came up there was anger and disgust that such things would be done since this was HER world now. When he became sick, phone calls got even harder. He was getting weaker, and her overbearing presence was even more oppressive. To save him the torture of dealing with the fall out, my communications became less and less. Not because I didn’t love him, or care about him. Because I cared for him too much to make him go through that, even if it meant not telling him how much I loved him. He lost his battle with his internal cancer in 2013. To this day, I have zero doubt he would have lived longer if She had not been there. I know in my heart of hearts he gave up and found a way out.
His last mention in the public eye had no words of his life before. Her final punch to the rest of us was not acknowledging we were a part of his life too. The last indecency is that She now lies beside him in a military cemetery. May she rest in hell.
I miss him. He was not my father, but he was the male role model I needed. He was too good for her, and as much as I honor him for what he did for my mother, he was too good for her too.